European Palaeobotany and Palynology Conference 2026

The palaeobotanical collections at the Senckenberg Forschungsinstitut und Naturmuseum Frankfurt (SF), Frankfurt am Main, Germany, are amongst the largest collections of this kind in Germany. They go back to the 19th century, and have continuously been enlarged since this time. They consist of material from regional (i.e. Hessian) localities but also from a large number of localities from all over the globe.
Besides the palaeobotanical collections proper, the SF also curates the GeoArchive Marburg, the former palaeontological-collection of Marburg University, Germany, which includes also a large number of fossil plant remains from a variety of regional but also international plant-bearing localities.
Some of the highlights of the palaeobotanical collections in Frankfurt are:
• The Messel macro-palaeobotanical collection (> 33,000 catalogued specimens)
• The Messel palynological collection
• The nannoplankton collection of Erlend Martini
• The wood anatomical collection (slides of fossil and modern plants) of Richard Kräusel
• Parts of the carpological collection of Ludwig Kirchheimer
• Macro-plant fossils from the Zechstein (Late Permian) of NW-Hesse (with the oldest figured specimens dating back to a publication by Ullmann from 1803)
The collections are open to all visitors and guest scientists with a scientific interest in palaeobotany.
The lab-facilities at the SF (e.g., HF-lab, thin-sectioning lab) but also a variety of microscopic facilities (e.g. fluorescence microscopy, high-resolution macro- and micro-photography, CLSM, multispectral imaging) are also available for visitors and guest scientists working on the collections.
For questions regarding the collections or visits to the collections please contact Dieter Uhl (dieter.uhl@senckenberg.de).